Top 10 Halo 2 Glitches

It is a well known fact within the Halo community that Halo 2 was rushed to release, and although the finished product is a great game, it wasn’t as polished as the developers would have liked, particularly in some areas of the campaign. This is great news for players, who in the time since the game’s release have found a multitude of ways of exploiting glitches in the game’s physics engine to explore outside the levels in the campaign, which the developers actually filled with Easter Eggs knowing that this would happen. Some of the glitches in Halo 2, however, are less to do with the lack of level boundaries and quirks with the physics engine and more to do with specific objects or enemies in particular levels that, to the uninitiated, may come across more like Easter Eggs – and for all intents and purposes they are, albeit unintentional ones.

10 – Needler Sentinel – Quarantine Zone

The origins of this particular glitch are somewhat unclear – either Bungie originally intended for Sentinels to carry and use weapons other than their usual energy beams, or it was simply a one-off error with the coding of this particular Sentinel – but either way, in a particular room on the game’s eleventh level, the player encounters a massive firefight between Sentinels and Flood combat forms that can get pretty hectic. In the chaos, it can be hard to miss this one particular Sentinel that fires Covenant Needler rounds instead of the Sentinel Beam, and when it is destroyed, it drops a Needler. Interestingly, the Sentinel Enforcers do use a weapon similar to the Covenant Needler, but that weapon fires red shards instead of purple, and Sentinels are never seen wielding that weapon either. Bungie employees have given varying explanations for this, from an accidental ‘slip-of-the-mouse’ when the level was being coded to an entirely cut feature in which Sentinels would use their own version of the Needler on occasion – regardless, it is an interesting glitch.

9 – Sergeant Johnson Drops Dead/Four Sergeant Johnsons – The Great Journey

This glitch is actually two (or perhaps even three) glitches at once, all in the same place on the same level, but they essentially amount to the same result. If the player can manage to maneuver a Covenant Spectre into the final room of the final level of Halo 2 – no small feat – one can actually use the vehicle in the final boss against the Brute Chieftain Tartarus, and can even convince Sergeant Johnson to climb aboard. As Halo 2 veterans will known, Johnson is crucial in the final fight against the Chieftain as he uses a Covenant sniper rifle to lower the Brute’s shields, thereby allowing the player to deal the fatal blow. Due to a strange glitch in the design of the three-tiered arena, however, crouching on the lowest level will cause the player or any other character to drop dead instantly, because you technically intersect with the death barrier that prevents you from falling beneath the floating structure. If one can maneuver Johnson in the Spectre onto the bottom level and cause him to climb out, and because Johnson always crouches after exiting a vehicle, the normally invincible Sergeant will drop dead, allowing you to loot his weapon.

Also, using the same method of getting Johnson in the Spectre, the player can amass a small army of Johnsons since the game automatically spawns a new Johnson when the old one moves too far away from his sniping spot – undoubtedly to keep the battle fair in case Johnson somehow falls. With one Johnson on the powerful plasma turret and two Johnsons riding shotgun, plus another Johnson occupying the sniping spot, this glitch can seriously tip the balance of the boss fight in the player’s favor.

8 – Bullying the Heretic Leader – The Arbiter

For those who played the first two Arbiter levels and thought “How is the Heretic Leader always one step ahead?” and aren’t quite satisfied with finally killing him at the conclusion of the level The Oracle, on the original version of Halo 2 for the Xbox it is actually possible to reach him early and essentially beat him up – you can toss grenades at him, throw him into a chasm, or even drop a Banshee on him, and yet he will simply refuse to die. For this to happen, you must equip an Energy Sword in the scene in which the Heretic Leader is visible through a window giving orders to his men and then climbing aboard a Banshee to escape your wrath once again. If you time it right, it is actually possible to use the sword’s lunge attack to clip straight through the window and hit the Heretic Leader directly. Now simply use a grenade to render his Banshee inoperable and he will just stand there, as if accepting his fate. It should be noted that doing this makes the level impossible to complete, and as previously mentioned this only works on the original Xbox version of Halo 2, so it might be more trouble than it is worth at this point. Still, a fun time-wasting glitch that is actually one of the few glitches in the game to be patched in later re-releases.

7 – Exploring ‘Lake Regret’ – Delta Halo/Regret

Who doesn’t love exploring outside level boundaries? This particular glitch can allow players to not only explore outside the usual confines of the levels Delta Halo and Regret, but it also demonstrates the Master Chief’s less-well known ability to breathe underwater indefinitely, something that comes in very handy when walking across the bottom of a deep lake Pirates of the Caribbean-style. To accomplish this, one has to simply use a grenade to propel the player onto the hills around the final part of Delta Halo or the first part of Regret, and then simply walk around the lake to find a point in which it is possible to walk into the water. Falling into the lake is not a good idea, since fall damage will usually kill the player on contact, but another method that involves using a Ghost to climb the grassy verges around the level can speed things up a bit. (This is easier with the Sputnik Skull enabled that allows the player to propel themselves further with explosives). Once in the lake, the player is free to wander around, study the architecture of Regret’s temple that seems to float on the lake with the supports cutting off about 3 feet beneath the water’s surface, listen for the sound of invisible Whales, and find a large and ominous hole in the floor that seems to serve no real purpose whatsoever.

It should be noted that, although not included here, the well-known ‘Vacations’ that can be taken on almost every Halo 2 level (using similar methods to exploring Lake Regret) constitute their own ‘sub-category’ of fun and interesting glitches. In fact, that might be the subject of another article later down the line…

6 – Knock the Prophet out of his Throne – Regret

Speaking of the Prophet of Regret, another fun glitch allows the player to temporarily remove the shriveled Covenant hierarch from the safety of his Gravity Throne. During the boss fight with him at the end of the level Regret, the throne must be boarded in order to injure the Prophet as his shields absorb anything the player can throw at him from overcharged Plasma-Pistol shots to both barrels of a Rocket Launcher. However, since Regret’s throne is treated like any other vehicle in order for the boarding mechanic to work, with enough explosive force the player can flip the throne over and, like all occupants of a flipped vehicle in Halo, Regret will be forcibly ejected. Interestingly, the Prophet will simply sit on the floor in the same position as if he were occupying his throne and then attack the player with a Plasma Pistol of all things. This alludes to the fact that in the Halo novels he and most other Prophets are depicted carrying at least one Plasma weapon as a sidearm, and the Prophet will actually drop this pistol upon death whether he is in or out of his throne. This glitch is tricky to pull off, and it is recommended that either the Scarab Skull or weapons like the Fuel Rod Gun or Needler are used since only these can create enough inertia to bounce Regret out of his seat.

5 -Miranda in Space – Cairo Station

For those who are not convinced that Miranda Keyes is an unmitigated badass, this glitch confirms that Miranda Keyes can actually breathe in space. Using an Energy Sword on the level Cairo Station, it is possible to push Keyes (or Johnson, for that matter) past the point in the level in which they would usually leave the Chief and through an airlock, and as they are programmed to be invincible the repeated strikes will not kill them. By eventually pushing them into a section of the level that they are never supposed to enter, the player can actually push the naval officers into space, as the next section of the mission requires Chief to exit the station and fight Covenant EVA troopers. Though they need the player’s help to get through the level, Keyes and Johnson will attack enemies that are nearby and speak to the Chief, despite the fact that they are in a near-vacuum without any protection whatsoever. Oddly, they will de-spawn if the player attempts to push them back into the station later in the level, and nudging them off the station and into the vast abyss of space will cause them to drop like a rock, still adopting a combat-ready pose as they plummet into the Earth’s atmosphere.

4 – Plasma Grenade Fountain – The Oracle

This is another glitch that exploits the Heretic Leader, specifically one of his holo-drones. At the start of the game’s seventh level, the player encounters a hologram of the Heretic Leader that taunts you and your allies before disappearing. However, in the game’s code, this hologram is treated as an enemy – and if you melee it with the Piñata Skull on in Halo 2: Anniversary, it will drop Plasma Grenades in abundance. Using the faster swing of the Energy Sword means that in the brief time the hologram is present the player can spawn dozens of grenades, and this can cause a massive explosion if they are all detonated at once.

3 – Permanent Invisibility – Chief Levels

In the original Halo 2 for the Xbox, Skulls had to be found and activated in levels on Legendary, and the effects of the skulls only lasted until the console was switched off. This was done because, at the time, there was no menu option to activate and deactivate Skulls, they were merely included by the developers as wacky Easter Eggs. As a result of this, acquiring the Envy Skull in the original Halo 2 and using it just as a checkpoint passes, saving and exiting, and then restarting the Xbox and loading up the level will cause the Chief to be permanently invisible. This works because the Envy Skull trades Chief’s flashlight for Arbiter’s active camouflage, a feature that he can never acquire in regular gameplay, but only for the time in which the Envy Skull is activated. Because switching off the Xbox deactivates the Skull, saving and exiting a level while Chief is still invisible means that, after the Skull is deactivated, the game cannot revert him back to normal visibility and the player will be able to sneak up on unsuspecting enemies and eliminate them at their leisure. This glitch is most useful on Legendary, but it can only be used in levels in which Chief is the playable character.

2 – Cortana’s Scary Face – The Great Journey

This glitch is a result of the feature in Halo 2: Anniversary that allows players to switch back and forth between the classic graphics and the updated, remastered graphics created by 343 Industries and Blur Studios. At the conclusion of the final cutscene of Halo 2 when Cortana accepts Gravemind’s offer of answering his many questions about Humankind and the Covenant, switching from new graphics to classic graphics at the last second of the cutscene after it cuts to black will present the player with this abomination – clearly Cortana’s rampancy is taking its toll. This is caused in part by the fact that the remastered cutscene is longer than the classic cutscene was, and so switching back shows the player the models after the cutscene has technically already finished, and is also due to the fact that the camera has panned inside Cortana’s head, leaving only her eye visible. Hilariously, this glitch is also accompanied by the spooky final few notes of the Halo 2 Soundtrack’s Epilogue.

Honorable Mention – The ‘Ghosts’ of Halo

This phenomenon caused quite a stir when it was first discovered in the early days of Halo 2 on Xbox Live. According to legend, players on maps such as Lockout on Xbox Live began reporting sightings of strange characters that resembled other players but lacked a gamertag, movement animations or a place on the scoreboard – these ‘Ghosts’ would reportedly kill players by sliding around the map and tossing grenades in all directions, and in certain cases they were apparently un-killable. Various explanations for this odd occurrence were suggested throughout the fanbase such as the ‘Ghosts’ being a result of a glitchy network connection, but other more ludicrous theories sprung up such as the idea that Bungie employees had programmed bots into the game, that Microsoft were spying on players or that the maps were legitimately haunted. Ultimately, confirmed sightings of the so-called ‘Ghosts’ that haunt various multiplayer maps of Halo have been scarce since Xbox Live has improved, which would suggest that the phenomenon was a result of little more than a bug in Xbox Live or a dodgy network connection, or that the entire thing was a hoax. Either way, the ‘Ghosts’ of Halo are still regarded among the game’s most infamous glitches.

1 – The Honour Guard Councilor – Gravemind

Halo 2 had numerous boss battles in the game, ranging from our old friend the Heretic Leader to the Brute Chieftain Tartarus, but one boss fight in the game was actually created by accident as a result of a glitch in the game’s code. The final enemy of the mission Gravemind is an Elite with a unique set of armour that changes each time the level is played – sometimes the Elite will have an Honour Guard helmet, a Councilor helmet, or even no helmet at all – but the armour will always be white with the gold and black spurs of the Honour Guard. This mini-boss with unique randomised armour is actually the result of the game trying to spawn an Elite Zealot that was coded with the wrong tags, causing the Elite to spawn with widely varying armour and much higher shield strength. Strangely, the Elite can sometimes spawn with the face of Rtas ‘Vadum, an ally to the Arbiter throughout the Halo 2 and Halo 3 campaigns, and sometimes the Elite spawns with a strange and unique helmet that was coded into the game but never allocated to any characters. This visually unique accidental mini-boss is arguably the best example of how good some of the glitches in Halo 2 actually are – although the game is riddled with bugs like these, it doesn’t negatively impact the gameplay, and instead serves to make the game that bit more interesting.

Top Ten Sci-Fi Spaceships

The Science-Fiction genre is replete with examples of iconic spaceships, often used as transports and even mobile homes for the characters in science fiction. As such, the ship almost becomes a character in itself, developing its own quirks and technicalities that give it its personality. But the question remains – which ship is the best? For this list we will be judging based on how useful the ship would be, and the extent of its powers. To begin:

10 – Red Dwarf – Red Dwarf

Despite being a slow, unwieldy, ancient mining ship that is peppered with meteorite impacts, Red Dwarf always pulls though and provides a home for its disparate band of occupants. Also, it comes packaged with Holly, the transgender eighth generation ‘hologrammic’ computer with an IQ that supposedly exceeds 6,000. Depending on the day, Holly might be sane or totally senile, and the ship seems to attract trouble on a near-daily basis. Don’t look forward to speedy travel with the Dwarf, however, since it trundles along at a snail’s pace. You do, however, get Starbug, but its up to you whether or not that’s a good thing.

9 – High Charity – Halo

The Covenant Holy City-ship of High Charity serves as the cultural, political and military headquarters of the alliance, and mobilises the Covenant assault force against Humanity. The best thing about High Charity is its environments, which you explore during the Halo 2 levels Gravemind and High Charity. The curved purple interiors and modular architectural design demonstrate the alien nature of the Covenant, and in terms of power it boasts a slipspace drive for instant transportation and a vast array of destructive weapons, with docking structures that can contain and transport hundreds of capital ships. So whether you like strolling through botanical gardens or invading planets with huge fleets of warships, High Charity is for you.

8 – Thunderbird 3 – Thunderbirds

The ultimate classic rocket design, Thunderbird 3 might not have weapons but it is extraordinarily fast – able to make it halfway around the world in a matter of minutes, in some cases. Overall, the red rocket tops any other rocket-type ship in sci-fi, and the best part about it is that you might even get Tracy Island thrown in, as well as the ability to travel to and dock with Thunderbird 5, an orbital space station. Designed to launch as an SSTO (single-stage-to-orbit) rocket, the ship can be re-used unlike contemporary rockets used by NASA, and it even runs on the same fuel,

7 – Ebon Hawk – Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

The spiritual predecessor to the Millenium Falcon, the Ebon Hawk serves as the home for the traveling circus cast of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. This ship was constructed over 1,000 years before the Falcon, so it isn’t as fast but it does seem to be more heavily armoured. However, featuring dual engines, the Ebon Hawk was certainly fast for its era, and could certainly hold its own against more powerful ships like the Leviathan. After all, this was Darth Revan’s ship for a reason.

6 – Serenity – Firefly

Similar to the Ebon Hawk, Serenity is a freighter primarily, designed to haul cargo from planet to planet. Thanks to heavy modifications, however, she serves as the vessel of Mal Reynolds and his crew, a band of vagrants and smugglers who partake in various illegal activities. The ship was described by Firefly creator Joss Whedon as the ‘tenth character’ of the series, and she has character indeed – fans have likened Serenity to freighters like the Millenium Falcon. The biggest strength of Firefly-class ships is their durability and ease of repair, and Serenity is no exception.

5 – USS Enterprise-D – Star Trek: The Next Generation

The USS Enterprise is a fantastic ship in its own right, but the USS Enterprise-D surpasses it in almost every conceivable way. For one, it is essentially just a more powerful version of the original Enterprise, and it also has much more advanced technology aboard like the Holodeck and the Saucer Separation. Not only that, but the ship is also more luxurious, with more space and better living conditions – the original Enterprise was built with practicality in mind, with dull grey bulkheads and no inch of space wasted, whereas the Enterprise-D has a warm beige interior design with the occasional appearance of wood paneling. With the addition of the crew, particularly Data, the Enterprise-D is equipped to deal with any obstacle, whilst also providing a comfortable environment.

4 – Millenium Falcon – Star Wars

Allegedly the fastest piece of junk in the Galaxy, the Millenium Falcon is certainly a go-to starship if speed is a priority. Han Solo boasts in A New Hope that the Falcon ‘made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs’, which sounds like he made it up on the spot but will undoubtedly be extrapolated to the Nth degree in the upcoming Solo Movie, but the general jist of what he is saying stands – the Falcon is a fast ship. Able to outrun any Imperial starship, this unassuming-looking freighter has gone on to become one of the most famous ships in the Galaxy, and aided in the destruction of not one but two Death Stars. The only real downside of the Millenium Falcon is its amenities – it is essentially a grotty smuggling vessel, with very few forms of entertainment to pass the time during the long hyperspace jumps (unless you count a dodgy holographic chess set and a flying ball.) The ship would be handy in a pinch, but for long-distance travel the Falcon falls short of the best ‘conventional’ starship in Sci-Fi, which is:

3 – USS Voyager – Star Trek: Voyager

The Intrepid-class starship won the top spot for Top 10 Federation Starship Classes, and the most famous ship of its class is at least half of the reason why. The exploits of the USS Voyager top any starship of this dimensional plane, and its already advanced and reliable design is augmented by many modifications that the crew picked up during the ship’s time in the Delta Quadrant, including some Borg technology and a massively improved warp drive. With the Voyager also comes the Delta Flyer, a greatly upgraded and improved redesign of the standard Federation Shuttlecraft for ship-to-surface transport or even ship-to-ship dogfights, an innovation that other Federation starships lack. Despite the greater focus on tactical systems and speed, the Voyager still features the entertainment systems available on the Enterprise like the Holodeck, and is sleeker, faster and comes with a holographic medic.

2 – Heart of Gold – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The Heart of Gold is powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive, a wonderful new method of crossing interstellar distances in a mere nothingth of a second, without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace. This incredible propulsion system temporarily launches the ship through every part of conceivable space simultaneously, and the only payoff is a temporary bout of extremely high improbability, which can cause hallucinations, out-of-body experiences, or a complete rewrite of the ships entire internal environment at a molecular level. Known effects have included the creation, and spontaneous upending, of a million-gallon vat of custard, marrying Michael Saunders, the transformation of a pair of guided nuclear missiles into a whale and a bowl of petunias, and transforming one of its crew into a penguin.

1 – The TARDIS – Doctor Who

The TARDIS may not look like much of a spaceship, but its abilities exceed all of the other ships on this list combined. Capable of traveling anywhere in time and space, the TARDIS can quite literally take its crew anywhere in any time period, and even other dimensions under the right conditions. If that were not enough, the ship is dimensionally transcendental, meaning the interior exists in a separate dimension to the exterior, creating the illusion that it is bigger on the inside, and the interior of the TARDIS is so vast that after over 2,000 years of owning the ship the Doctor has still not managed to fully map the floor plan. The TARDIS is alive, in a sense, and can alter and reshape its interior to suit the needs of its occupants, as well as allowing for a huge amount of internal systems such as a karaoke bar, a cinema, a library and a swimming pool, all of which occasionally move, change, or in rare cases fuse (causing the swimming pool to sometimes appear in the library). The ship is shielded to the extent that Dalek missiles – of which less than 10 are needed to eradicate a planet – don’t even scratch the blue box. Undoubtedly, no other spaceship in Sci-Fi even comes close to beating the TARDIS.

And that’s our list of the Top 10 Sci-Fi spaceships. If you enjoyed, be sure to leave a like, and you can follow us and like us on Facebook for more content like this. If you have your own list of Top 10 Sci-Fi spaceships, be sure to leave it down in the comments below!

Top 10 Best Halo Easter Eggs

So I’ve already covered the topic of Creepiest Halo Easter Eggs, Funny Halo Skulls and Hardest Halo Skulls, so it seems only fair that I also rank the funniest and/or coolest Easter Eggs in the Halo Series to round this theme to a close. For this list I will not be including Skulls, since I have covered those already, and none of the Easter Eggs that appeared in my Top 10 Creepiest Easter Eggs list will be appearing here either. So, coming in at number 10:

10 – Windows Phone – Halo 3

The wall-mounted phones in Halo 3 have tiny Windows logos on them, a nostalgic callback to the era in which this game was released. This is one of several computing-related references in Halo 3, another being the fact that the UNSC computers offline with a modern-day blue screen of death. Just a small but relatively interesting detail that shows the dedication to making the world seem real.

9 – Excalibur – Halo 2

This Easter Egg is tucked away in the top floor of a destroyed building in the Halo 2 level Outskirts. What makes this interesting is that it is located outside of the level boundaries, meaning that the developers must have known that players would manipulate the game mechanics in ways that would allow them to leave the level boundaries, and yet rather than filling every corner of every level with invisible walls or death timers, Bungie instead filled the outside areas of their levels with secrets to find. This Energy Sword serves as a reward for players who manipulate the game mechanics, as well as seeing one of the infamous ‘Rex’ symbols written in rocks and blood (shotgun shells in the anniversary version). This sword can also be used to implement a glitch that gives you an invisible Energy Sword with infinite ammo in the next level, so it is a useful Egg to find.

8 – Notice Board – Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary

The Pillar of Autumn’s notice board in the original version of Halo: Combat Evolved was already full of in-jokes, references or gags such as a note claiming to have lost Alien‘s cat ‘Jonesey’, but the Anniversary version steps this up a notch. The ‘Cat Found!!!’ notice is clearly a reference to the Jonesey post on the original notice board, and the Spartans on the ‘Defy the Covenant’ poster are wearing Halo: Reach-era armour, further solidifying the link between Reach and Halo: Combat Evolved. There is even a trollface next to a blatant advert for Halo 4 which, at that time, had not been released, so in a way this notice board looks both to the past and to the future.

7 – Red vs Blue Marines – Halo 3

This one crops up a lot because it doesn’t take much to find – simply go further along to a corner near the start of the Halo 3 level Crow’s Nest when the game prompts you to turn left, and you will encounter a door with a Marine standing outside. What proceeds is a humourous argument between the Marine outside and another Marine, presumably just inside the door, over the password needed to get in. What makes this even better is the fact that the voices are done by various members of the Red vs Blue cast, and the conversation changes depending on the difficulty.

6 – Football – Halo 2

This one takes some effort but is really fun if you can pull it off with two people. The football itself can be located at the very top of a damaged skyscraper in the Halo 2 level Metropolis, which continues Halo 2’s theme of placing fun and interesting secrets and hard-to-reach areas. Using various Skull combinations, the players can then push the ball with explosives out of its corner and down into the play-space of the road itself, and with two Ghosts this can make a game of giant football in the streets, if you can overcome the strange physics of the ball.

5 -Siege of Madrigal – Bungie Games

This Easter Egg is brilliant because it recurs throughout the franchise, and when activated it plays a piece of music called Siege of Madrigal from one of Bungie’s older games, Marathon. To activate it in Halo: Combat Evolved, one must fly a Banshee up to the peak of the control room tower in the level Assault on the Control Room and park in a very specific spot (to the right of the second-highest rung, to be precise.) The tune can be found in almost every Halo game, usually located in a very specific but hard-to-reach location, and can be heard here.

4 – Flyable Pelican/Phantom – Halo: Reach

It had long been a dream of Halo fans to actually get a chance to fly the iconic dropships of either the UNSC or the Covenant, but Halo: Reach finally made it possible, albeit in the form of a very glitchy Easter Egg. Bungie knew that fans had always wanted to fly a Pelican because the vast majority of the few mods that exist for Halo generally are mods that allow the player to fly the Pelican, and although they implemented a form of air-vehicle in Halo 3 with the Hornet and again with Halo: Reach’s Falcon, they knew that before they left the franchise for good they would have to provide some form of closure to fans, and so enters New Alexandria, an air level in Halo: Reach that primarily uses the Falcon, but with the flip of a secret switch and a quick flight through a giant ring-shaped building and your Falcon is magically transformed into a very unstable Pelican. Phantoms can also be driven if you manage to complete the same method with a Banshee, although that is even more unstable with no collision detection at all.

3 – Club Errera – Halo: Reach

Oddly enough, this next Easter Egg is actually from the same level as the previous one, but that is no real surprise since Halo: Reach’s New Alexandria is jam-packed with fan-service Easter Eggs, since it was Bungie’s last massive open level in the series. The basic story behind Club Errera is simple – in the game as normal, you pass through a nightclub during your mission to destroy Covenant Radar Jammers, but if you manage to find and activate a secret switch before coming into the Club, all of the Covenant will be either dancing, Dj-ing or waiting at the bar, and the Hunters act as bouncers guarding the door. Overall, it is a surreal experience, and you can even change the music with different switches, one of which is a remix of a track from the Halo 2 Soundtrack.

2 – Scarab Gun – Halo 2

This unassuming-looking Plasma Rifle floating above a conveniently placed danger sign atop a skyscraper (that requires sacrificing an arm and a leg to get to) is actually the key to ultimate power. There are few examples of Easter Eggs as sandbox-altering as secret weapons, but this is the obvious exception. This weapon, although looking visually identical to a Plasma Rifle, is actually a placeholder for the Scarab’s main weapon used semi-regularly throughout the level Metropolis in Halo 2. Using a Banshee, (which requires a tedious and complicated method to even obtain in the first place) the player must fly up to the very top of a specific building in New Mombasa, the player can find and acquire this weapon, which allows them to shoot Scarab beams to their heart’s content. Unfortunately, this weapon is extremely hard to use since it can often kill the player due to the insanely high splash damage, and a single tap of the trigger can instantly kill the player. In the Anniversary version of Halo 2, a whole Skull was created to turn every weapon in the game into a Scarab weapon, (that thankfully turns off scoring) so now even casual players can experience the power.

Honorable Mention – Secret Talking Grunts, Halo: CE, Halo 2 and Halo 3

This single Honorable Mention is in fact three separate Easter Eggs, all involving secret Grunts with specific lines of funny dialogue. The first is the ‘Thirsty Grunt’, who can be found during the final run of the last level of Halo: Combat Evolved. When approached, he expresses his hope that the ‘food nipple’ is waiting for him at the starship, clearly ignorant of his impending doom. The next, ‘Cowardly Grunt’, can be found in the Halo 2 mission Uprising, during which the player is actually allied with this Grunt since you play as the Arbiter. However, this Grunt will refuse to fight, and instead pitifully cowers in the corner whilst assuring the Arbiter that he will stay behind to make sure nobody sneaks up on him. The final Grunt is aptly named the ‘Final Grunt’, since he is the final grunt you encounter in Halo 3, although he is occasionally called the ‘Jerk-Store Grunt’ since he rants and raves to the Chief, claiming that ‘the Jerk Store called, and they’re all out of you’ as well as berating the Chief for having a troubled past and claiming that he is high on gas. Wow.

1 – Terminals, Data Files and Audio Logs – All Halo Games

This could be considered cheating since I’m incorporating a vast array of separate Easter Eggs into this one entry, but they are essentially the same thing – hidden lore elements that are buried in the game and left for the player to find. This process began in Halo 3 with the ‘Terminals’, Forerunner (or sometimes Covenant) devices that could be accessed to read/hear small snippets of information about the wider story of the game and its context. This continued with Halo 3 ODST’s atmospheric audio logs, Halo: Reach’s data files and continued well into the 343 era with fully rendered mini-movies being hidden throughout Halo 4, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and Halo 2 Anniversary, and a huge swath of fully voiced audio logs for Halo 5: Guardians, which is one of the few things worth praising about the game. What makes this such a great Easter Egg is that it is the perfect way of making players want to learn more about the wider lore of the games, as by hiding it away and including an element of challenge to find them with achievements encourages players with a sense of accomplishment or desire for 100% completion to scour the levels searching for clues and piecing together the wider lore that explains the origin of the Forerunners, the Halos, the Covenant, the Flood and countless other aspects of Halo lore.

So that’s my list of Top 10 Best Halo Easter Eggs, I hope you enjoyed and if you did then please be sure to leave a like, and remember to like us on Facebook or follow us on WordPress for more content like this, and look down below for more Halo related content!

Star Trek – Top 10 Federation Starship Classes

The world of Star Trek is defined by magnificent and elaborate starship designs of various diverse cultures, races and factions. The show has created dozens of iconic starship designs, many of which are recognisable even to people who have never seen the show, but by far the most iconic are the various Federation Starships that … Continue reading “Star Trek – Top 10 Federation Starship Classes”

The world of Star Trek is defined by magnificent and elaborate starship designs of various diverse cultures, races and factions. The show has created dozens of iconic starship designs, many of which are recognisable even to people who have never seen the show, but by far the most iconic are the Federation Starships that appear throughout the various incarnations of the legendary series. For those not in the know, the Federation in Star Trek is made up of a multitude of different races, including humans, and the starships we see throughout the show ferry our heroes from planet to planet, engage in ship-to-ship combat, and provide a home from home for the sizeable crew that make it their mission to explore the furthest reaches of space.

The question remains, however: which Federation starship type is the best? Of course, there are many different criteria that can be used to define what the ‘best’ class of ship is, from how iconic it is to how powerful it is within the show itself. For the purposes of this list, we will be factoring in several different criteria including longevity, artistic design, reliability and physical power, and ship classes from either the revival movies or the expanded universe will not be included. With that out of the way:

10 – Miranda-class

Although it may be accidental, the Miranda-class has become somewhat of a running joke in the Star Trek universe, due to the numerous cases of Miranda-class vessels getting destroyed, attacked, lost, captured or having their entire crew die of old age. This is almost certainly due to the incredible quality of the original studio model of the USS Reliant, which led to the show’s creators re-using the same model for many other less important ships. It may seem odd now, but the USS Reliant was actually supposed to be quite powerful compared to the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, as it is capable of holding its own in a fight against Kirk and his crew. However, subsequent appearances of Miranda-class vessels have presented the ship as being woefully under-powered, possibly due to the huge time jump between the Original Series and TNG.

9 – Prometheus-class

Visually, the Prometheus-class is awesome – the pointed primary hull, the four nacelles – and of course the infamous ‘multi-vector assault mode’ which splits the ship into three sections for coordinated attacks – but the reason why this ship ranks low on the list is the ease by which it is captured in the show, during its only significant appearance in Star Trek: Voyager’s Message in a Bottle. Despite featuring advanced armaments, prototype tactical configurations and improved shields, the ship is already in Romulan hands before we are even introduced to it, which begs the question – how on Earth did the Romulans manage to steal this advanced top secret prototype so easily? Clearly the crew were redshirts in disguise, considering they apparently all just dropped dead with little resistance.

8 – Nebula-class

A smaller and more compact cousin of the Galaxy-class starship, Nebula-class vessels are shown to share the same levels of endurance as their larger cousins in the show, with examples like the USS Phoenix and the USS Sutherland holding their own against comparatively larger starships, including the Galaxy-class itself. One of the best things about this vessel is its design, as it includes the newer, sleeker design of Federation Starship whilst also invoking a sense of continuity, since the ship is structurally similar to the previously-mentioned Miranda-class ships.

7 – Ambassador-class

Despite its brief appearance, the Ambassador-class USS Enterprise-C proved the worth of this class both as a Federation starship but also as a ship bearing the name Enterprise. The design of this ship has a clear motive – to form a link to bridge the gap between the USS Enterprise from the Original Series and the USS Enterprise-D from TNG – and it works perfectly. The clearly separate Saucer, Engineering and Nacelle sections are reminiscent of the original Enterprise, with the blue circular deflector dish resembling that of the Enterprise-A, and yet the colour scheme and sleeker look makes it visually similar to the Enterprise-D, providing clear continuity between the classes and forming a ‘missing link’ between the Original Series and TNG.

6 – Sovereign-class

From one Enterprise to another, the most famous Sovereign-class starship is of course the USS Enterprise-E, the final ship in the mainline show in the chronology of Enterprises. Created to replace the unwieldy Enterprise-D model that was unsuitable for big-budget movie levels of filming, the Sovereign-class is meant to represent the pinnacle of Federation starship design for its era, featuring advanced ‘Quantum Torpedoes’ to replace the regular old photon torpedoes and a more traditional Federation starship design that incorporates updated technology. Unfortunately, the entire point of the Sovereign-class’s creation was made redundant by the transition from physical models to entirely CGI ships towards the end of the TNG Movies, but we can still appreciate the fantastic design.

5 – Excelsior-class

The ‘new kid on the block’ towards the end of the Original Series era, the Excelsior-class was essentially the sleeker, cooler younger brother to the now-outdated Constitution-class ships. With famous post-Original Series starships like the USS Excelsior and the USS Enterprise-B represented by the Excelsior-class, it remains one of the most famous and well-known Federation ship classes that is not the primary ship of a mainline TV series, although it does feature prominently in Star Trek VI and Generations. Interestingly, the prototype Excelsior-class ship was captained by none other than Hikaru Sulu, further solidifying the idea that the Excelsior-class bears the torch passed on from the older Constitution-class.

4 – Defiant-class

Although the design of the Defiant-class ships represents a radical deviation from the standard Federation starship look, within the context of the show the change was warranted. Throughout the late-TNG and Deep Space Nine era of Star Trek, the Federation is faced with enemies that require a more tactical and combat-orientated response, rather than the usual ‘exploration first, combat second’ philosophy that had previously dominated their starship designs. The Defiant-class represents a prototype of dedicated warship designed to fight and defeat the Borg, a vicious and powerful threat to the Galaxy. Seeing action throughout Deep Space Nine and First Contact, the Defiant-class lives up to its role as a combat vessel by aiding in the defence of Earth from the Borg and the war with the Dominon.

3 – Constitution-class

The grandfather of Federation starships, this is the one that started it all. This design would go on to influence each and every Federation starship to come, and is respected as one of the most iconic and memorable starship designs ever created. In terms of the show’s continuity, the Constitution-class is far from the first Federation starship to be created, but the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 is certainly its most famous, and the adventures of Captain Kirk and his crew go on to become almost akin to the stuff of legend by the time of the Voyager and DS9 era. The ship itself is supposed to be one of the best Federation ship designs of its time, and although it is far outstripped by the Federation starships shown in later Star Trek incarnations, the legacy of the Constitution-class is upheld through the name Enterprise, and all the fantastic ships of that name to come. Talking of which…

2 – Galaxy-class

Known most famously for the USS Enterprise-D from TNG, the Galaxy-class starship serve as the primary setting for TNG, and so forms the backbone for what is arguably the essential Star Trek experience, depending on how you rate it in comparison with the Original Series. As a result, like the Constitution-class, the Galaxy-class has become one of the most recognisable ships in all of Star Trek. From a visual standpoint, this vessel effectively conveyed that massive changes had occurred in the Star Trek universe since the era of the Original Series. The ship maintains the same basic shape as the earlier incarnation, but with a sleeker design and more advanced-looking engine and sensor technology. In-universe, the Galaxy-class is a powerful exploration vessel, and although we never see the Enterprise-D go head-to-head with a Romulan Warbird to the death, the vessel is held in high regard by many allies and enemies of the Federation, making it a formidable vessel.

1 – Intrepid-class

Despite being smaller than the Galaxy-class, less advanced than the Sovereign-class and less iconic than the Constitution-class, the Intrepid-class is a fantastic ship in its own right. Quick and nimble, it demonstrates its efficiency throughout Star Trek: Voyager as the titular USS Voyager holds its own against practically everything the Delta Quadrant can throw at it, provided no time-travel is involved. The Intrepid-class personifies the apparent change in Starfleet from the era of TNG, with stark grey metallic corridors replacing the beige and wood-paneled interior of the Galaxy-class ships, and more focus on speed and durability than sheer power of its weapons. The design of the Intrepid-class also departed from the traditional Federation starship design, doing away with the separate saucer and engineering sections and opting instead for a sleeker, more aerodynamic dagger-shaped design. This design choice complements Captain Janeway’s spiky personality, and it is no surprise that some species in the Delta Quadrant come to see the USS Voyager as a warship, since Janeway demonstrates the Intrepid-class’s resourcefulness when dealing with more powerful enemies like the Borg, by pushing the craft to its very limits. Indeed, in an alternate timeline in which Voyager is constantly attacked by a race that can negate shielding technology, Janeway and her crew manage to keep Voyager running after weeks of constant attack, to the point that the ship loses an entire deck but still functions. Likewise, the Borg modifications made to the ship during Star Trek: Voyager demonstrate the ship’s adaptability, as does its ability to actually land on planets, a gimmick that is used about as often as the Galaxy-classes’ saucer separation.

Do you agree with this list? What is your favourite Star Trek ship design? Leave a comment below with your ranking, and see below for more Star Trek related posts.

Top 10 Most Challenging Halo Skulls

Skulls in Halo are gameplay modifiers that were first introduced as Easter Eggs in Halo 2 to provide an extra layer of depth to the game, and to provide more of a challenge for players by altering the way the game plays. To activate a Skull, the player must first find it, which is usually a challenge in itself, as the Skulls are scattered throughout the campaign levels, usually well off the beaten track, with some requiring complex exploits, codes, platforming, glitches or even surviving a gauntlet to actually reach them.

In this list, I will be counting down the Top 10 Skulls from the perspective of modifying the game to make it more of a challenge. I have already done a list of Top 10 Most Fun Halo Skulls, and to clarify there may be some overlap between that list and this one, since not all the Skulls that make the game more difficult are necessarily frustrating or unfair (although some of them are). I will also be factoring in the difficulty required to actually retrieve the Skull, to a certain extent, but I will not be including Skulls on this list purely for that reason (so no Halo 2 IWHBYD). With that out of the way, we start with:

10 – Fog – Motion Tracker Disabled

Fog, referred to as ‘Cloud’ in Halo: Reach, disabled the handy motion tracker that has been a staple for mainline Halo games since the beginning. This effectively removes the ‘eyes in the back of your head’, as the Skull’s description states, meaning you cannot sense enemies before you can see them. This Skull is most often used by players on Flood levels to heighten the sense of fear as you are unaware of enemies sneaking up behind you, although experienced players can easily overcome this. Overall, this Skull removes a helpful feature in the game but nothing more, so it provides some challenge but doesn’t really affect gameplay all that much, unlike…

9 – Tilt – Enemy Strengths and Weaknesses to Particular Weapons Increased

Though that may sound like an overly complex description, this Skull’s very specific effects are actually surprisingly complicated, since Halo’s weapon sandbox philosophy relies on certain ‘types’ of weapons that are stronger or weaker depending on how you use them. Plasma weapons, for example, are good against shields but not against armour, and with this skull on plasma weapons become twice as effective against shields but twice as useless against un-shielded targets. What makes this Skull challenging is that it makes all enemies with plasma weapons (which is a lot since plasma weapons are the staple of the Covenant armory) twice as good at taking down your shields. This Skull does make fighting Flood somewhat easier, however, and can come in handy if you can acquire plasma weapons of your own, making it somewhat of a double-edged sword.

8 – Tough Luck – Enemy ‘Luck’ Increased

To say that this Skull increases the ‘luck’ of AI does require some explanation – technically, this Skull modifies AI behaviour so that they are much more effective at dodging grenades, vehicles, and basically any form of slow-moving threat, whilst also making it far more likely that enemies will enter an enraged state. This does create the impression that the AI is just ridiculously lucky, however, and this makes the player seem unlucky by comparison, hence the Skull’s name. Needless to say, this does create a challenge, and although this Skull’s effects also extend to your allies the sheer frustration of having enemies be able to dodge grenades that they cannot even see drains any potential fun-factor from this Skull.

7 – They Come Back – Flood are Terrifying

This Skull’s official description reads: “Flood Combat Forms spawned by Infection Forms reanimating a corpse are much more dangerous“, although they neglect to mention exactly how the Flood Combat Forms are made more dangerous – one would expect a damage boost, improved intelligence, or perhaps an expansion to the amount of weapons they can use – but no. This Skull speeds up Combat Forms so they now charge towards the player at breakneck speed, all while flailing their limbs around in an impossibly fast and suitably terrifying way. This Skull does only affect Combat Forms that had previously died and later reanimated, but in real terms, that’s still a significant proportion.

6 – Catch – Enemies Throw More Grenades

This Skull has a very simple effect, in that it makes enemies throw more grenades. Whilst this inevitably leads to a hailstorm of lethal fire pelting the player from all angles, all is not lost – this Skull also makes enemies always drop two grenades of their preferred type when killed, which even the odds slightly. An unusual quirk with this Skull is that it almost forces enemies to throw grenades with reckless abandon – they will toss explosives regardless of situation, even if it will almost certainly get them killed. This Skull would have ranked higher on the list were it not for the apparent reduction in AI intelligence and for the fact that anyone who is familiar with Halo multiplayer will knows how to deal with countless poorly-judged grenade tosses rounding every corner.

5 – Famine – All dropped Weapons have Half Ammo

This Skull is just plain cruel. Already sparse ammo for heavy weapons, sniper rifles, or basically any power weapon is now ridiculously rare, and the fact that all weapons have their ammo halved means that plasma weapons now expend their ammo within mere minutes, finding dropped ammo refills is even more essential, and every last shot has to count. For an even greater (and ludicrous) challenge, this Skull can be combined with the ‘Recession’ Skull, which makes every shot worth twice the ammo – so you are essentially left with a mere quarter of the ammo you would have in regular gameplay. To add a further level of difficulty to this Skull, it remains one of the most frustrating Skulls to retrieve in Halo 3, requiring the use of several players at once unless a rare Gravity Lift powerup can be obtained, and even then it requires precision platforming. Halo 2’s incarnation of this Skull should have made my Top 10 Creepiest Halo Easter Eggs list, since the Skull is found surrounded by twitching Flood corpses…

4 – Assassins – All Enemies are Cloaked

If cloaked enemies weren’t bad enough, this Skull amps that up to 11 by making every single enemy cloaked permanently. This includes everything from Flood to Hunters, and even includes your own Marines if you betray them. Oddly, this Skull was originally set to appear in Halo 3, but was removed, probably to make LASO (Legendary with All Skulls On) mode less infuriating. This is one of the few Skulls that could possibly be considered a whole separate difficulty in itself, as when activated even the lower difficulty settings require a whole new level of skill to master.

3 – Thunderstorm – All Enemies are at Max Possible Rank

I already covered this Skull in my Top 10 Most Fun Halo Skulls, since its ability to promote allied Elites to their highest rank does come in handy in missions where they are available. However, in any other given situation, this Skull definitely amps up the difficulty by making all enemies at their maximum possible strength, intelligence and tactical capability. Not only that, but in Halo 2 it means all Elites can withstand a direct stick with a plasma grenade on Legendary, and will draw their swords to cut through Marines with ease if they are angered. This Skull also gives all Sentinels and Elite Flood Combat Forms shields, meaning it is harder to take them out with quick successive precision shots.

2 – Mythic – All Enemies have Increased Health

The semi-unofficial ‘Mythic Difficulty’ involves playing Halo on Legendary with this Skull on, and it definitely increases the challenge by making all enemies ridiculously strong. With this Skull on, certain high-ranking Elites won’t even be vulnerable to an overcharged plasma pistol, making the age-old ‘Noob Combo’ strategy of taking out shields with an overcharge and following up with a headshot obsolete. There are a few positives to this Skull, namely that your allies are given a slight health boost too, but this seems utterly inconsequential compared to the massive boost in health and shields that even a lowly Elite Minor receives on Legendary. Combine this with the Thunderstorm Skull, and you have your own personal purgatory.

Honorable Mentions

Blind – No Heads Up Display

I include this Skull here as an ‘honorable mention’ since it doesn’t really seem fair to the other Skulls to actually include this on the list proper, because it certainly makes the game ridiculously hard. Without a Heads-Up Display you cannot see your motion tracker, health, ammo, grenades, or even the reticule – however, this Skull is rarely used in actual gameplay since it was not added with the intention of being a challenge. It is not included in the required Skulls needed to activate LASO, it does not need to be found on Legendary and it is often found near the start of the games in which it appears. This Skull was included as a means to create machinima, take screenshots or record game clips before those features became more readily available through theatre mode or Xbox capture, but if you want to attempt to actually play the game with HUD elements disabled, a better alternative is the Malfunction Skull which disables one random HUD element with each try, a much more lenient alternative.

Ghost – AI no longer flinch from attacks

One of the many Skulls to debut in Halo 2 but never return again, the effect of this Skull sounds like no more than a minor inconvenience to the player, but when activated the effect becomes immediately noticeable. This Skull essentially makes frontal assault melee attacks against Elites useless, since without the flinch mechanic the enemy can immediately melee you back, which is an instant kill on Legendary. The removal of flinching also means that enemies are no longer stunned by sniper shots, glancing explosive attacks or vehicles, which can be frustrating when pacing shots.

Jacked – Ground vehicles can only be used by hijacking

When vehicle hijacking was first introduced in Halo 2, it was hailed as a fantastic innovation to help balance vehicular combat – essentially, it meant that the player could easily acquire a new vehicle without having to waste time killing the occupant, and made dispatching heavy vehicles like Wraiths much more easy. However, with this Skull activated, vehicles can only be used if they are hijacked, which basically makes UNSC vehicles unusable. Thankfully, air vehicles are not affected, so at least it isn’t totally game-breaking.

Anger – AI fire weapons much faster

Found in the Halo 2 mission Gravemind guarded by a secret invisible Grunt armed with heavy weapons, Anger makes all enemies fire their weapons at ridiculous rates – much faster than the player can physically fire them. Plasma rifles become a stream of lethal energy, Jackal Snipers can pick off the player and three Marines in rapid succession, and Grunts fire their weapons so fast that they overheat. This Skull makes standing still a death warrant, and on Legendary allies are ripped apart by a merciless wave of weapons fire. Whilst this sounds like a nightmare, that’s nothing compared to number one on this list:

1 – Iron – ‘Death carries a Heavy Price…’

This Skull is insane. Whilst activated in Single Player, checkpoints no longer exist, meaning that if you die, you have to restart the entire level from scratch. This Skull has almost certainly been responsible for the destruction of more Xbox controllers than any other Easter Egg in the history of the console, because it makes every single level an unforgiving rage-fest on Legendary. Don’t think co-op will save you either – whilst checkpoints do still exist with Iron on in co-op mode, the death of any player reverts everyone to the last checkpoint, making teamwork and strategy essential since the cheap ‘hopscotch’ method (which involves leaving one player out of combat for the others to respawn nearby) totally redundant.

To make matters worse (or better, depending on if you like insane challenges) most of the Halo: Reach Weekly Challenges, Xbox Achievements or Maximum Scoring Records require the use of the Iron Skull, such as the Vidmaster: Annual achievement which requires four players to complete the final level of Halo 3 on Legendary in separate Ghosts, so if any player falls off the crumbling walkways, everyone is hurled back to the checkpoint. The only reason why you will ever want to activate this Skull for fun is if you want to rack up insane score multipliers, since it offers the highest point multiplier in the game for its insane level of difficulty.

And that’s my list of Top 10 Most Challenging Halo Skulls, I hope you enjoyed, and if you did then be sure to leave a like, you can also comment down below if you thought any other Skulls should have made the list. Also, you can Follow Sacred Icon or like us on Facebook for more content like this, uploaded every other day.

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Top 10 Most Fun Halo Skulls

In this list, I will be counting down the Top 10 Skulls from the perspective of modifying the game to make it more fun. I will also be doing a list of Top 10 Most Challenging Halo Skulls for balance, and there may be some overlap. Nevertheless, we start with:

10 – Bandana – Infinite Ammo

Bandana comes quite low on the list due to the fact that it basically amounts to cheating, but having infinite ammo comes in handy for other reasons than just making the game ridiculously easy. This skull is essential if you want to do any boundary-breaking, out-of-map exploring or ridiculous grenade jumps because it means you aren’t limited to the 4-frag cap from the original Halo 2. Hidden deep within the Silent Cartographer Island in Halo: Combat Evolved, retrieving this skull requires clever manipulation of the original Halo’s unusual physics engine, and a clever way of making this skull redundant for any actual ‘cheating’ that was included in Halo: The Master Chief Collection makes gaining points impossible whilst this skull is activated, so really its just for fun.

9 – Black Eye – Melee Recharges Shields

Whilst it might seem like it wouldn’t be very fun at all to have to melee enemies in order to recharge your shields, the Black Eye skull appears on this list due to how it works in Halo 2. Unlike all other Halo games (so far) Halo 2’s version of the Black Eye Skull lets you increase your shield strength to far in excess of what is usually possible by whacking enemies, allowing you to survive explosions and other forms of damage that would kill you in normal gameplay. This opens up huge possibilities for exploration since you can stack grenade explosions to propel the player up high buildings and across chasms, and since Halo 2 lacks any form of invisible barriers or kill timers, basically anything you can see, you can reach.

8 – Grunt Funeral – Dead Grunts Explode

It requires no explanation as to why a Skull that makes dead Grunts explode like Plasma Grenades makes the game hilarious to play, particularly since it actually also adds a layer of challenge to the game since all Grunts become time-bombs, and avoiding them at all costs is a priority. An interesting quirk with this Skull is that any and all dead Grunts explode, including ones that are already pre-loaded into the level – this can create some interesting results, particularly in Flood levels, as it redistributes any object that isn’t glued to the ground in a blaze of plasma.

7 – Masterblaster – Co-op Special Powers

One of a few wacky ‘co-op only’ Skulls that 343 industries added to Halo 2 in Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Masterblaster gives one player huge overshields but removes their ability to shoot and gives the other player infinite ammo but removes their shields entirely, with the roles swapping after a certain amount of kills. This skull essentially makes co-op a bit more challenging, but also has potential for hilarious results, particularly when the roles switch halfway through a rampage.

6 – Prophet Birthday Party – Regret Guitar

Another bizarre Skull that 343 industries added to Halo: The Master Chief Collection, the ‘Prophet Birthday Party’ skull is unique in that it has only one use – if you could call it a ‘use’. What this skull lacks in usefulness it makes up for in sheer ludicrousness, as it punctuates every whack that you deliver to the Prophet of Regret during the boss fight halfway through Halo 2 with electric guitar licks (performed by none other than Steve Vai himself) and lightning bolts. Increasing the difficulty magnifies this skulls effect, as it takes at least 10 punches to kill Regret on Legendary and the licks intensify each time.

5 – Sputnik – Physics Modifiers

This Skull is essential for level exploration, particularly in the original Halo 2, as it significantly reduces the mass of all objects in the game, making melees and grenade explosions blast objects much further than they did before. This means that the player can use grenade jumps to reach places that are further away, and makes whacking objects around much more easy, allowing the player to uncover passageways and secrets that would be impossible in normal gameplay. For example, to find the Giant Football in the Halo 2 level Metropolis, the player needs to use the Sputnik Skull combined with a grenade jump to blast themselves onto a high tower, and the Sputnik Skull is also needed to be able to melee the football down, after which Ghosts can be used to knock the ball around. There is an even more extreme version of this Skull in the Anniversary version of Halo 2, but more on that later.

4 – Grunt Birthday Party – Headshots Become Explosions (or Confetti)

This Skull is one of the many that had its effects altered over the course of the Halo games – in the original Halo 2, this Skull required a descent to the very bottom of the Heretic Gas Mine upon which the player is confronted with a circle of dancing Heretic Grunts, all worshiping the aforementioned Skull and with good reason, since all headshots become plasma explosions with this Skull activated, even on dead bodies. However, in later Halos (and even in the Halo 2: Anniversary port in Halo: The Master Chief Collection) this Skull turns headshots into small explosions of confetti, coupled with the jarring but now famous sound clip of children cheering from Viva Pinata.

3 – Envy – Master Chief can go Invisible

This may sound like another ‘cheat’ Skull, and in some ways it probably is, depending on your point of view. Technically, all this Skull does is grant the Chief access to an ability usually only accessible when playing as the Arbiter, as in Halo 2 Arbiter’s ‘active camouflage’ replaces the flashlight and allows for more stealth-orientated levels. However, the stealth ability is notoriously unreliable, since it only lasts for a short time and requires lots of time to recharge. When Chief has this ability, you can’t even see the timer for the recharge either, so you have to rely on the audio cues to know when camo is ready to use again. However, it does allow for a stealth alternative in the Chief levels, which adds an extra layer of depth to the gameplay that is usually only present in the handful of tailor-built Arbiter levels.

2 – Feather – Like Sputnik on Steroids

Ah, the elusive Feather Skull. Unavailable to many players in the early days of Halo: The Master Chief Collection’s release due to a bug in the pre-order system (which was later fixed when all the pre-order bonus Skulls became available to everyone), the Feather Skull initially seemed to be not worth the bother – according to the description, with this Skull activated all melees ‘impart more movement physics’, essentially making this Skull’s effect very similar to the Sputnik Skull. However, when you combine the effects of both Skulls together at the same time, it doubles the effect and allows the player to reach inconceivable heights with grenade jumps, (usually resulting in death unless a much higher-up destination is nearby) but, more importantly, allows for ridiculous arcing jumps if an explosion occurs just next to or behind the player, making this Skull and its older brother popular with speedrunners as it allows for huge leaps that allow Chief to clear entire buildings in a single leap, cutting time by requiring fewer grenade jumps.

Honorable Mentions

Thunderstorm Skull – All Enemies are at Max Rank

Whilst this Skull will certainly feature on my ‘Top 10 Most Challenging Skulls‘ due to the fact that it makes every enemy the strongest and most intelligent that it can possibly be, in certain situations (in Halo 2 in particular) this Skull also makes the game much more fun, since the Skull’s influence also affects Covenant allies. This means that with Thunderstorm activated, any level in which you encounter Minor Elites or Grunts as allies will now gift you with a squad of highly-trained, uber-powerful Elite Ultras and surprisingly confident and capable Grunt Ultras, and the best part is that Ultra Elites always carry an Energy Sword as their secondary weapon meaning Brute enemies rarely stand a chance.

That’s Just… Wrong Skull – Better AI Sight and Hearing

This Skull, like Thunderstorm, seems like it would make the game more difficult than fun, since it removes the restrictions that the developers put on many of the AI to balance the gameplay – they now hear your footsteps, can see the shimmer of your invisibility, and fire with amazingly precise accuracy at all times, so why is it on this list? Well, for the same reason as Thunderstorm – these effects are also bestowed upon your allies. With this Skull on, allies will rarely ever accidentally kill themselves with heavy weapons, can now locate and dispatch cloaked enemies with ease, and fire with (literal) inhuman accuracy. Essentially, with this Skull on, the allied AI is probably as good as the game as you are.

Streaking – Shields Decay, and Recharge with Kills

The final Skull in the ‘Honorable Mentions’ category is yet another example of a Skull with a challenging effect that can be manipulated for fun. This Skull fixes a critical weakness of the Black Eye Skull, namely the fact that after doing a particularly elaborate grenade jump that blasts you out of the map you have no way of actually recharging your shields. With this Skull on, however, grenade throws can actually recharge your shields, meaning with Bandana on you can slowly recharge your shields by throwing grenades. Whether or not this is a glitch, it opens up more possibilities for exploration by allowing the player to pull off multiple Black Eye-enchanced feats in succession.

1 – IWHBYD – Rare Dialogue is more Common, and Secret Dialogue is unlocked

This Skull is fantastic because it makes the game much funnier to play in such a simple way. By reversing the probabilities of common and rare combat dialogue, this Skull makes lines of dialogue that are usually heard only once in a blue moon much more common, and unlocks hidden lines of dialogue that are locked in the game’s standard code. This makes Marines, Elites, Brutes, Grunts and basically anything else in the game that speaks English yell more hilarious (and sometimes vulgar, perplexing or even downright ridiculous) insults to the each other, the player, or even the developers via fourth-wall breaking complaints about the game. The Skull also increases the chances of AI talking to and interacting with each other, and allows the player to hear tales such as the story of Flipyap the Grunt, Sergeant Bank’s message home (delivered in the form of a telegram) and Sergeant Johnson’s many hidden lines of cutscene dialogue.

Named after the subtitle ‘I Would Have Been Your Daddy…’ from the start of Halo: Combat Evolved’s fifth level, Assault on the Control Room, The Skull actually unlocks this line of dialogue for Sergeant Johnson in-game, and he completes the quote with ‘…but a dog beat me over the fence.’ What makes this Skull even more interesting, however, is the ridiculous lengths you have to go to in order to actually unlock it in Halo 2 and Halo 3. Halo 2 involves navigating the normally-inaccessible rooftops of Mombasa to find the Skull (which may or may not actually be there) before having to face off against wave after wave of Ultra Elites who guard the Skull (for whatever reason) before finally unlocking the effects. Halo 3 requires the player to jump through giant holograms of the Halo rings in a specific order – each ring hums at a different tone when you jump through it, so jumping through the rings in a sequence that plays the seven notes of the Gregorian Chant in the Halo theme causes the Skull to magically appear before the player, opening the door for many hilarious encounters to come.

So that’s my list of the Top 10 Most Fun Halo Skulls, I hope you enjoyed and if you did, why not leave a like? You can also follow Sacred Icon or like us on Facebook for more content like this, and look down below for more of my Halo posts!

Top Ten Tunes from the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Soundtrack

Whilst the Elder Scrolls series isn’t strictly speaking within the boundaries of science fiction, the franchise does have a fair amount of science fiction elements to it – the mysterious and technologically advanced Dwemer, the strange alternate ‘dimension’ that is Oblivion, and the fact that the series is set on another planet, to name but a few. In light of this, I present this review of my second favourite video game soundtrack of all time, after Halo, and that is the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim soundtrack. This selection of ambient tunes is absolutely spectacular, and even if you’ve never played the games the soundtrack is still amazing to behold, making great use of chanting and choral singing to get into the Nordic theme of the game, and beautiful string pieces for ambient exploration music.

#10 – The Road Most Travelled, Dragonborn Soundtrack

This one is technically cheating, since its basically a remake of the song of the same name from the Morrowind soundtrack. But it is always nice when Elder Scrolls games retain the same musical cues to maintain that sense of progression between games and link the three Bethesda Elder Scrolls games together. Whilst this isn’t strictly speaking a Skyrim track in itself, it certainly adds to the Skyrim experience by invoking serious Morrowind nostalgia and making the task of exploring the ashfields of Solstheim that bit more fun.

#9 – Solitude, Skyrim Soundtrack

This is the theme that plays when you step into the capital of Skyrim, the heart of Imperial presence in the game, and it does its job of conveying the sense of security almost cradling nature of the great city of Solitude as this soft piece creates an atmosphere of tranquillity. For me this theme brings back memories of living in Proudspire Manor, with Ysolda as my wife and Meeko as the family dog, that was secretly a front for my evil obsession with Daedric weapons and armour. Regardless, the track provides a peaceful backdrop for milling around cities in Skyrim with a gentle atmosphere, particularly if it rains in-game.

#8 – From Past to Present, Skyrim Soundtrack

This is another track that is particularly nostalgic, since it always seems to play when you first start a game. Interpreted by many players as synonymous with peace and safety due to its connection to towns like Riverwood and Whiterun, this track inspires a feeling of adventure even now, seven years later, which is truly a testament to Jeremy Soule’s skill as a composer. Nothing sucks you in to Skyrim more than the feeling you get when listening to this majestic track and exploring the fields around Whiterun…

#7 – Watch the Skies, Skyrim Soundtrack

This track is perfect for dragon-battling, and it will be the only inclusion of combat music on this list. Why? Well, Skyrim’s combat music isn’t bad but it is repetitive, particularly since there are so few combat tracks. Too often does Steel on Steel play whenever any random mudcrab decides to so much as wander near you, making the combat music in Skyrim more of an annoyance than the awesome feature it is. As such, hearing Watch the Skies play is somewhat refreshing since it occurs more rarely, and signifies that a great battle is about to take place. Ultimately, Watch the Skies is the supreme combat track.

#6 – Secunda, Skyrim Soundtrack

This tune tops polls for best ambient soundtrack, and it’s not hard to see why. This track is one of the most iconic in the game and was one of the few that I actually remember by name. Skyrim does a fantastic job of creating atmosphere, and the mellow staccato notes of Secunda make nighttime sombre and melancholy, but also creates an ambient air of caution towards the surroundings, since you never quite know what can be lurking in the dark at night in Skyrim…

#5 – Far Horizons, Skyrim Soundtrack

Regarded by many to be the best piece of music on the soundtrack, Far Horizons is a perfect tune for exploring. Aside from the fact that it would not seem out of place being played over scenes in The Lord of the Rings, this piece goes through distinct phases as it plays but never loses that sense of beholding that runs throughout, as if we are constantly in sight of something that inspires awe. Fitting, really, since exploring in Skyrim can often have that effect.

#4 – Unbroken Road, Skyrim Soundtrack

Although it might seem like an odd choice since it is heard so rarely in the game, Unbroken Road is actually a fantastic track if one takes the time to listen to it. I wish that this piece had been in the game more, possibly unlocked as a regular exploration theme after the player completes the main quest, perhaps. But when this song kicks in, it invokes some heavy emotions, and it is easy to see why they chose this song from the soundtrack to be the music that plays the first time you ride a Dragon.

#3 – Streets of Whiterun, Skyrim Soundtrack

This piece, rather like Solitude, is associated for many players with feelings of security and tranquillity, since it is most often played within the protection of big cities like Whiterun, Riften or Solitude, although it doubles as a perfect exploration tune. What makes this piece so emotive is the swelling and receding of the strings and the repeated light, staccato plucks that resemble the steady flow of nature that is ever present in Skyrim.

#2 – Sovngarde, Skyrim Soundtrack

The theme for Sovngarde is simply awesome. Not only does it perfectly contextualise the main theme of the game, but it also provides a constant drum-beat like rhythm to urge the player on when faces the challenges of the Nord afterlife. It adds a particular ambient air to the section in the fog, and encapsulates the grandeur of the Hall of Valor, meaning it essentially kills two birds with one stone and perfectly sets the scene for the Sovngarde section of the game.

Honourable Mentions

Ancient Stones – Skyrim Soundtrack

Jeremy Soule uses horns very well in the Skyrim soundtrack, and particularly well in Far Horizons. But Ancient Stones is no slouch, and contains its own unique harpsichord-like feel that slowly transitions into another horns section. This tune is perfect for exploring forests, mountainous areas or encounters with small towns or Orc villages.

Kyne’s Peace – Skyrim Soundtrack

Like Secunda, Kyne’s Peace is a track that plays exclusively at night, and it certainly invokes a feeling of chill with its hollow choral howls. As it begins, this tune is perfectly mellow – it is a staple of night times in Skyrim to hear this piece, and no bad thing – and the crescendo into the higher-pitched singing is fairly subtle, the vocals are quiet and almost angelic. This track is called Kyne’s Peace for a reason, in that it certainly invokes a peaceful feeling.

Forgotten Vale – Dawnguard Soundtrack

This piece is chilling. Similarly to Unbroken Road, Forgotten Vale is only heard at a certain point in the Dawnguard questline, and as such it is rare to actually hear this piece in game, but it is definitely worth it when you do. This perfect use of choral melody creates a feeling of sympathy for the Falmer and their grim fate, particularly since you see for the first time the long-forgotten achievements of their ancestors.

1 – The Jerall Mountains, Skyrim Soundtrack

This tune inspires the same feeling in me as many people get from the Shire theme from Lord of the Rings, particularly since I closely link this song with memories of playing Skyrim for the first time on my Xbox 360. A lot has changed since then, but this tune hasn’t, and it sounds just as fantastic today as it did seven years ago. Jeremy Soule has composed many masterful tracks that invoke feelings of adventures and wonder, and this is undoubtedly one of his best.

Top Ten Creepiest Halo Easter Eggs

As any Halo fan will tell you, every Halo game has a lot more to it than just gunfights with aliens. One of the deepest aspects to Halo is its Easter Eggs, and the series has played host to several widely known Easter Eggs, both legendary and infamous. However, there is a specific category of Easter Egg that particularly peaks my interest, and that is creepy Easter Eggs that are there to freak players out. Bungie didn’t hold back when it comes to secrets to hunt down in the Halo campaigns, and thanks to their love of all things mysterious and (at times) bizarre, Halo boasts a wide variety of really weird things to find if you take the time to look hard enough.

10 – Hidden Marine on 343 Guilty Spark

If you thought the insane screaming Marine that you find inside the Forerunner structure was bad enough, you are not prepared for this guy. He can be found using a glitch whereby spamming the grenade button at the start of the mission 343 Guilty Spark will prompt Chief to forget to get out of the Pelican, allowing you to ride it outside the level boundaries until it lands in an indent. You can then dismount and after about a minute of walking you will come across this poor soul, with his head planted firmly against a tree. If you aren’t paying attention and then you turn around and see him it can be quite startling. In the classic graphics its even spookier, as the trees are not there and he instead slowly appears out of the shadows as you approach, standing and staring but saying absolutely nothing.

9 – Standoff Dish Operator

This Easter Egg is so tiny that its almost impossible to notice unless you’re looking for it. But on the map Standoff in Halo 3, if you zoom in really close to the Radio Telescope that is closest to you with a Sniper Rifle or Beam Rifle scope, you can find this man – he cannot be killed, or interacted with in any way, and he is apparently a joke inserted by the programmer who rendered the model for the dish, the Halo wiki rather simply and rather spookily states: “This man is Travis Brady”, whoever he is. The reason why he is particularly creepy is that he just stands there – no matter how long you stand there looking at him, he will stand and stare right back at you. And he doesn’t even have a scope to see you properly, but he knows you’re there.
Interestingly enough, this map has another real person’s face utilised for the skybox texture as the man in the moon, so clearly the designers had quite a bit of fun designing Standoff.

8 – Megg Easter Egg

Megg is an Easter Egg that involves performing a very specific set of steps on the first mission of Halo: Combat Evolved on Legendary, including jumping on and off a yellow barrel and murdering Captain Keyes. Once you find the Easter Egg however, you will be filled with pride at knowing that you sacrificed humanity’s best hope for survival to get a look at a letter ‘M’ made out of blood splatters and bullet holes. Seriously though, why is this here? It seems very incongruous, and quite creepy if you think about it – perhaps there is a violent murder loose about the Pillar of Autumn, and the letter ‘M’ is his calling card? Who knows…

This Easter Egg is referenced in a similarly complicated trial in Cairo Station, the first mission of Halo 2, as if the player manages to complete the mission without taking a single hit on Legendary, they will unlock a hidden announcement from Lord Hood which mentions the elusive Megg.

7 – Skulls

Although the concept of Skulls as objectives or gameplay modifiers is now firmly ingrained into the consciousness of the Halo lexicon thanks to Oddball and the inclusion of the Skulls as Easter Eggs, with many players simply seeing the skulls as game modifiers that are implemented in a fun and intriguing way, but if you think about it, the Skulls are creepy in their own way. They are just lying there, scattered around UNSC bases and Forerunner installations and even the African Savannah and the depths of High Charity, but why? Whose skulls are these? Am I thinking to deeply into this?

6 – Why Am I Here? Easter Egg

It is always fun to find those hidden messages that programmers leave in seemingly random terrain shapes, but this message suggests a deeper meaning that could simply be a Red vs Blue reference but could also be a sign that one of the people working on Halo 2 really didn’t want to be at his desk that day. Considering the nightmare development that Halo 2 had, I don’t blame him, but in-universe this message represents the possible last words of a former occupant of Beaver Creek, who was trapped there and scrawled his last message before his body was consumed by nature.

5 – Cortana on High Ground

This Easter Egg is prevalent throughout several missions of Halo 3, but is most prominent on the multiplayer map High Ground. If one stares long enough at the live security camera footage of a hangar in Crows Nest that can be found on all portable UNSC computers in Halo 3, eventually an image of Cortana staring blankly at the player will appear for a few seconds. Creepily, if one uses theatre mode to observe a control panel in a game that is in progress, you can see that Cortana does this every so often whether players are looking or not. That means that every time you play Halo 3 near a UNSC computer, Cortana can periodically drop in to take a look at what you’re up to…

4 – Microsoft SAM Easter Egg

This is a funny but still rather creepy Easter Egg that can be found in The Covenant in Halo 3. To find this Easter Egg, one must start the level on Normal or higher from the beginning and take a Hornet to the end of the outer rail of the Citadel on the left hand side. Going to the right hand side will trigger the song ‘Siege of Madrigal’ to play, a whole different Egg entirely. When you reach the end of the prong, wait about 2 or 3 minutes and eventually, out of nowhere, the voice of Microsoft SAM will breathe down your neck, saying:

Sam: "OMG (Oh My God) this game needs more guitar wank. Am I right?"

Sam: "Happy Easter Marty."

Sam: "I am a monument to all Marty's sins lololol."

Sam: "J and C Paul, you are so totally fired."

3 – Halo: Reach Radio Conversations

Throughout Halo: Reach, in both campaign and multiplayer, the player constantly encounters these tiny radios that often loop nothing but static – although some of them contain hidden messages or conversations. Most of them are fairly routine, some are calls for help, some are military personnel giving orders, and some are even just casual conversations about zombie plans. What makes this Easter Egg really creepy, though, is the thought that in several hours from when the game is set, every voice you hear on the radio represents the voice of someone who dies on Reach…

2 – The Halo 3 Cavemen

As strange as it may seem, Halo 3 has a resident population of cavemen. Each of the diminutive monkey people has the face of Marcus R. Lehto, the former Creative Arts Director of Bungie Studios who left in 2012. This Egg is as confusing as it is disturbing – where did the monkey men come from? Why do they have a bear? Why is the largest member of the family holding the bear, and why is it bigger than the smallest child? Most importantly, in the final cutscene of Halo 3: ODST, why does Edward Buck pick an insect off one of these creatures and eat it before your very eyes?

1 – Reversed Messages in the Soundtrack

We have already published an entire list on how good Halo’s soundtrack is, but one aspect of it that wasn’t mentioned in that list was the Hidden Messages that can be found within certain songs of the soundtrack. Halo 2 has ‘Destroyer’s Invocation’, the first movement of the ‘Mausoleum Suite’ ,which has a very deep and underlying guttural vocal melody that is totally indecipherable unless played backwards. If you are able to listen to the song backwards, the voice is revealed to be possibly that of Mendicant Bias, an A.I. trapped within High Charity. Regardless, the voice says as follows:

“…I have walked among men and angels for three thousand years.

Time has no end… no beginning… no purpose.

I wander the earth, seeking forgiveness for my horrible crimes against God and man.

I live to see death and destruction, evil… over the light, but the light cannot be extinguished.

I live in a prison of my own demise.

I am lost…in time.”

Halo 3 has ‘Black Tower’, there is another reversed message that appears to frequently reference T.S. Elliot’s The Hollow Men, which is interesting since several aspects of Halo 3’s marketing campaign also referenced that poem. The backwards messages appear to say:“Eyes from Death’s dream kingdom, Appear as sunlight on a broken column. There in Death’s other kingdom walking alone, Trembling lips form prayers to broken stone.In death’s dream kingdom. These do not appear: There, the eyes are sunlight on a broken column, Waking alone at the hour when we are, Trembling with tenderness, Lips that would kiss, Form prayers to broken stone.”

Finally, ‘Dread Intrusion’ from Halo 3 has perhaps the most interesting reversed message of them all, since this message seems to attempt to give us an insight into what goes on inside the minds of the Flood as they further their onslaught:“Side by side, we march as one, Humans and Elites will die, The Earth will fall if we strike together, So forth shall all of life.”

So what are your thoughts?

What did you think of this list? Do you agree? If you can think of any other spooky Halo Easter Eggs, feel free to leave them in the comments, and look down below for more Halo related content!

10 – Obi Wan

Poor Star Wars: Obi Wan. If only you had been in development for another 2 years. The main reason why this is even on the list at all is that I used to have great fun with it as a kid, and for the life of me I can’t understand why. It has terrible controls, terrible gameplay, terrible dialogue and terrible voice acting. Not to mention the graphics are terrible, and the game crashes more times than I could count. They tried to get Ewan McGregor to play Obi-Wan in this game and I presume he said no, so they got another Scottish actor to take his place. Unfortunately, he doesn’t drop his Scottish accent, and so Obi-Wan goes through this entire game sounding like a Scotsman with a cold pretending to be Obi-Wan. But theres something about the game still… maybe I’ll give it another chance. Until then, Scottish Obi-Wan saying “DUH YUH UNDERSTAHND MAH LANGUAGE” will haunt my every waking thought.

9 – Republic Commando

Republic Commando is one of those games that you have to play to truly understand. On the surface it looks like just another Clone-orientated first-person shooter like the Battlefront games, but it is altogether different to what you might expect from a game in this genre. In much the same way as Halo defies its genre to deliver excellent story, world-building and music, Republic Commando delivers a refreshing new look on the internal composition of the Clone Army as we take control of an elite squad of Clone Troopers who are sent on daring covert missions involving stealth and tactical teamwork. The plot is excellent, and there will be no spoilers here – but it’s great.

8 – The Force Unleashed

Hype was in the air when The Force Unleashed was first announced, particularly due to the announcement that you would be playing as a dark side warrior, an angle that had been touched upon before in Star Wars games but had rarely been the sole focus, certainly not of a whole game. The Force Unleashed offers the ability to truly unleash the rage of the Dark Side of the Force, but the Wii’s controls make it obscenely difficult to do that, so I got the DS version instead. The story is fairly good, but what really makes this game fun is customising your lightsaber and collecting all the points necessary to upgrade your character.

7 – Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga

Come on, this couldn’t not be on the list. Lego Star Wars is a masterpiece of videogaming, not least because it is quite literally fun for all ages. The game is straightforward and simplistic, and yet it offers a certain level of challenge with the collection of minikits and other bonuses. I chose Complete Saga to go here because it really is the best of both the earlier games combined, allowing for seamless cross-trilogy travel with a huge amount of levels. Admittedly, I completed this game 100% my sister over the course of 3 months, and its arguably the greatest achievement of my life.

6 – Battlefront II

It may interest some people as to why Battlefront II is 6th and yet its predecessor, Battlefront, is 5th. It seems to be a commonly accepted belief that the second game improves on its predecessor in almost every conceivable way, and it is true that Battlefront II has many added features – the ability to play as heroes, space battles, sprint, more units, tracking points, ranking etc. I love this game in its own way, not least because of the excellent array of mods that are available, but there is something about the original game that means I can’t put the sequel higher.

5 – Battlefront

This game was one of my absolute favourites as a child, and I still play it to this day. What is undeniable now is that Battlefront trumps Battlefront II in terms of maps. Bespin: Platforms, Geonosis: Spire, Rhen Var: Harbour, Kamino: Tipoca City, Tatooine: Dune Sea, the list goes on. And the original Battlefront had much more focus on the Episode II era, which the sequel lacked due to the hype surrounding Episode III at the time.

4 – Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast

Since this was probably one of the first games I ever played I have a nostalgic attraction to Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast. I used to play the first level over and over again when I was younger, not understanding how to progress but just loving the idea of shooting up Stormtroopers. As I got older and actually managed to complete the game, the story enthralled me, not least because I had been baffled by it to such an extent as a kid. The multiplayer was brilliant too, even against bots, and there is a fantastic depth to the customisation in this game.

3 – Knights of the Old Republic

I am not normally a fan of RPGs, but KOTOR is the exception. The best thing about this game is that it is set so far before any of the Star Wars films are set that it can essentially create its own universe, having the Jedi be an Enclave of peaceful monks on Dantooine, the Sith a legion of soldiers who destroy planets with orbital bombardments, and the Galaxy an unknown place for your character to explore. This is like Star Wars as you have never seen it before…
And there’s a fantastic twist at the end. But again, no spoilers.

2 – Empire at War

Addictive games are sort of cheating when it comes to ranking lists, because when I’m in the mood for a game of Empire at War I’m usually there until 4am. The Galactic Conquest mode is fantastic, allowing you to build your own fleet and defend planets as you attempt to seize control of every corner of the Galaxy. One of the best things about this game is the ability to choose whether or not you wish to personally take control of land or space battles, so if you want to just focus on space then you can have the computer auto-resolve your land battles and turn the game into a fleet command simulator. Or, you can forego the space encounters and turn the game into a Star Wars version of Age of Empires. Speaking of which…

Honourable Mentions

Galactic Battlegrounds

Shockingly, I didn’t have this as a child. Despite putting countless hours into Age of Empires II: The Conquerors in my younger years, I didn’t realise there was a Star Wars version, which is strange since it uses the same engine and you’d think that searching for cheats and secrets about AoEII would have led me to encounter something about Galactic Battlegrounds. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case, probably because very few people even remember that this game exists anymore, which is a shame.

Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (DS Port)

Bit of an odd one here, but this is another Star Wars game I used to play a lot as a child and it’s actually quite good, the side-scrolling 2-D sections when playing as the Jedi remind me somewhat of beat-em-up games that you find in arcades, until the game suddenly shifts to a fully 3-D space battle simulator. The only thing that really brings this game down is the boss fights, which mostly boil down to memorising the enemy attack patterns and whacking them when they’re vulnerable.

Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

The problematic little brother. Of course, this game was not made by BioWare, and was actually created by Obsidian, who unfortunately shipped the game but forgot to put most of the things they had made onto the disk. Using mods this game can be returned to its original state but the release version remains a broken mess with too much content missing.

1 – Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

The undisputed King of Lightsaber Combat. Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy lets you take control of a budding young Jedi apprentice with a great deal of raw untapped power. Thanks to massive upgrades from the previous game, Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast the already fantastic sandbox is bolstered with new moves, new force powers, new enemies, new vehicles and even new types of lightsaber to use: double-bladed and duel-sabers. Overall, this game builds on all the successes of its predecessors by refining the already damn fine lightsaber combat system and telling a well-crafted, self-contained story.

10 – Wain Stop

Number 10 on this list is a more recent entry into the PilotRedSun pantheon but it perfectly encapsulates everything that a good PilotRedSun video is. It uses bizarre, disjointed and crudely-designed animation, the plot or purpose of the video is totally unexplained to us, it is presented in a format which is at first charming but then becomes somewhat disturbing, only to truly baffle us by the end with its sudden shift of setting and tone. The ‘music’, if you could call it that, is the only thing that really lets this video down, and that’s because – there isn’t really any. The sound effects are incredible, and evocative if a little tinny, but this video doesn’t contain an example of a classic PilotRedSun tune, so we will move on.

9 – Casino Night

Another beautifully creative and potentially disturbing video from two years ago that continued the somewhat-recurrent theme in PilotRedSun videos of having a bright red dragon-like ‘fiend’ involved somehow in the ‘plot’ of certain videos, Casino Night perfectly marries casino and gambling imagery with one of PilotRedSun’s tunes, also called Casino Night, that is track 3 of his album, ‘Achievement’. The plot is simple – a young man goes into a casino to try and win some big cash. After failing to win anything on the slot machines, he tries one of the card games, despite the warnings of the green man at the table that ‘the house always wins’. I won’t spoil the sublime ending, but it doesn’t really come as much of a shock. Also, the fiend’s ‘voice’ sounds awesome.

8 – Grinch’s ultimatum

The second of two Christmas-themed PilotRedSun videos that were released on Christmas Day of their respective years, Grinch’s ultimatum demonstrates how a simple melody can perfectly harmonise with the dynamic of a video. The animation perfectly syncs its tone and plot events to the changing nature of the music, right up until the magnificent ending. The message of Grinch’s ultimatum is clear – be true to who you are. When a benevolent-looking Santa magically slides into your room, and offers you the choice between eternal sainthood and perpetual grinchdom, go with your gut and take the path that best reflects yourself. Although you may have doubts, eventually your true meaning will become clear to you.

7 – video for silverman

Simply put, video for silverman is a depiction of a battle between Vegeta and Mewtwo, created as part of a ‘compilation collab’, according to the description. Regardless, what follows is a hilarious example of how limitations in animation can create some truly outstanding results, particularly what happens to Vegeta’s head whenever he talks. The music of this video at a glance is seemingly simplistic, and yet upon closer inspection it is actually quite a complex melody, that intensifies as the video progresses leading up to the explosive conclusion.

6 – dogowner

Another example of the fantastic music used in Pilot’s videos, although unfortunately the track from this video is not on the album. This video marks another appearance of the dreaded ‘fiends’ in Pilot’s videos, although this one seems much less malevolent and certainly more animal-like than the human-sized fiends that appear in other videos. Dogowner has a simple plot – a bloke sits down to watch some Shark Tale on TV with his best pal, when an interloper attempts to invade his abode. Naturally the dog has a thing or two to say about that, since the owner sits there helplessly meaning the dog has to do all the work. I wonder if Pilot had been watching too much Wallace and Gromit.

5 – preschool bully

Definitely one of the stranger PilotRedSun videos out there, preschool bully tells a simple story about a small kid who doesn’t want his sweets taken off him. This was actually the first PilotRedSun video that I ever saw, and it seems hard to imagine now that this ridiculous animation that is only fourteen seconds long would open up a formidable can of worms. Despite seeming like a disjointed event that you would witness in a dream, preschool bully provokes a pang of sympathy for the poor child at the table – maybe it is based off a true story?

4 – Garfielf

Undeniably this is PilotRedSun’s most popular video, with over 7 million views as of January 2018. which is a shame since it is a drastic deviation from his standard video style. Rather than a short animation with a confusing premise, this video is quite long – over a minute, which is long for a Pilot video. Garfielf also has minimal animation, mostly consisting of stills that play over the voice commentary (created using a text-to-speech instead of Pilot’s usual iconic voice), and intense dis-chordal music. The video itself is hilarious, like most Pilot videos, and I suppose it proves that trying something new from time to time occasionally pays off.

3 – IPAlien

‘An Alien walks into a bar’ might sound like the opening to a terrible joke, but in this video it opens a ridiculous chain of events that end up with Earth being conquered by alien forces. Why? Well, its over a beer – a space beer to be precise. An interesting ‘Easter Egg’ is actually visible in this video, just as the bartender is about to slide the Alien his cold one, if one looks to the far wall next to the ‘office’ a painting of a fiend is visible on the wall – clearly the owners of this odd establishment (which also has a billboard on the roof that says ‘Waste Time, And Money’) have interesting taste in pin-ups. Another interesting detail that never fails to make me laugh is the fact that the Alien’s ship is clearly marked ‘Unidentified Flying UFO’, just in case you were confused (but then again, when watching these videos, who isn’t?)

2 – quaker’s oats

The most interesting thing about PilotRedSun’s videos is their tone. Through the use of music, sound effects and voices Pilot is able to make his seemingly inane and totally off-the-wall videos take on tones of extreme malevolence, or, in this case, cheerfulness and warmth. The music used is a section of the tune Bodybuilder from ‘Achievement’, that is played over Mr. Quaker’s calm and composed morning advertisement for his exquisite oats. The overall message of this video is unclear, except, perhaps, to go and eat more Quaker’s Oats?

Honourable Mentions

nesquik rabbit

One of the shortest and earliest PilotRedSun videos, this was another of the ones that I was first shown when being introduced to his channel. What is truly a miracle is that I actually carried on watching videos after this one, as it seems to exist to be little more than an animation test for a gif, but who knows. Again, the tone of this video is odd – it isn’t exactly benign, but its not exactly malevolent either, but I certainly wouldn’t trust this bunny around the children he claims to ‘deliver the goods’ for…

christmas story (scroge duck)

This would have been a lot higher on the list were it not for the second Christmas Special, Grinch’s ultimatum, totally blowing it out of the water – but christmas story (scroge duck) stands in its own right as a classic PilotRedSun video – from the jarring animation, the awkward sound effects, the iconic voice and of course the fantastic music. The tune at the end of this video is Snow Day from ‘Achievement’, although unfortunately it only plays the first thirteen notes before the video ends.

Rocko’s Gaming Tragedy

One of the few PilotRedSun videos to actually use capital letters in its title, Rocko’s Gaming Tragedy takes the form of a ‘lost episode’ of the popular cartoon show ‘Rocko’s Modern Life’ that ran on Nickelodeon between 1993 and 1996. I have never actually seen a real episode of this show, although from what I hear from people who have seen both the original show and this video, the two are barely distinguishable from one another. Nobody quite knows how PilotRedSun was able to so perfectly capture the distinct animation style of Rocko’s Modern Life, nor how he managed to get his hands on the script for the lost episode, but undoubtedly Nickelodeon paid him to carry on the legacy of one of their flagship shows.

And finally, number one is…

1 – Pringle Advert

Another of PilotRedSun’s most popular videos, with over 1,170,000 views, is pringle advert, which continues another loose ‘theme’ of PilotRedSun’s videos whereby he will use the image of a popular brand mascot but give it an unexpected and sometimes malevolent twist. While the Pringle Man isn’t quite as horrifying as the Hamburger Helper mascot seen in another Pilot video, the malevolence of the Pringle Man is much more subtle, which is many ways makes it very creepy. The music and general look of this guy is bad enough, but after a calm introduction the video takes a turn when Pringle Man realises that nobody actually likes Pringles. Give the video a watch, you will not regret it.

And that’s my list of Top Ten PilotRedSun videos! Leave a like if you enjoyed, comment to say whether or not you’d ever seen any Pilot (and, indeed, if you are planning on watching any more now or if you want to run as far away as possible) and remember, for some cool tunes, check out PilotRedSun’s album, ‘Achievement’,